Just wait a while and the water will run clear,
like the ordinary morning renewing
its contract without reward,
like the strange shadows shuffling
behind the curtains of the nunnery,
it's no accident if it has a cause.

There are those priestly incantations that seem
to retrace your own steps
in the way prison guards can be seduced
by the sweep of their own spotlight,
or how your money can grow immune
to whatever thoughts you have about it.
Between never and soon
you found a place you can trust,
sacrificing something, but what?

Once there were pleasures you felt
you were pointed toward:
killing time among the disorganized throngs
as the snow paratrooped into the square,
and later, the lonely
valley's blushing countenance,
empty except for the mimics.

So you made a buoyant return
to your birthplace palisades,
stretching out amid the ornamentation
to which all recognition alludes,
the water running clear,
the water shallow and clear,
your memory undependable but long enough
to send you home still growing older, still dry.